


bright clouds, they will pass through

by inkandella



Category: Project Blue Book (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, it's so soft guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22394401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkandella/pseuds/inkandella
Summary: The nightmares, Allen thought, were the worst part. In the daylight he could pretend it never happened, push the images and sounds to the back of his mind and busy himself with a number of things. But at night, there was nothing stopping the smell of burning flesh from overcoming him, nothing stopping the flames from running vivid through his mind.He'd waken a few too many times with screams on his lips, and it was only a matter of time before Michael decided to take matters into his own hands.
Relationships: J. Allen Hynek/Michael Quinn
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	bright clouds, they will pass through

**Author's Note:**

> Hurrah, I found an old folder full of hynequinn fic that I never published! I decided to dust them off and post, I hope you enjoy them.
> 
> From the prompt sent into my pbb sideblog forever ago: _"How about Hynek having trouble sleeping after Fuller? Him and Quinn are on the road on a case when he wakes up from a nightmare."_ \+ _photographs_. 
> 
> (Also, Mimi is off living happily and this is NOT, nor will my fic ever be unless otherwise stated, Allen cheating on her. What she's up to in this timeline is completely up to you.)
> 
> Title from _Starlight_ by ALMA.

_“They’re coming, we’re too late!”_

_The flames edged closer, licking up the stems of the sparse grass at his feet, curling them brown and frail._

_“Allen.”_

_His chest felt tight, he couldn’t breath. He tried to inhale—and was met with the putrid smell of burning flesh and hair. He choked, clasping his hands against his mouth, over his nose._

_“They’re using us—you don’t know, you don’t_ know _!”_

_He felt tears leaking out of his eyes, but he couldn’t close them. He couldn’t look away._

_“Allen!”_

_He felt a rough hand on his shoulder, squeezing squeezing_ squeezing _, but he couldn’t move his head to look at who it was._

_The smell wouldn’t leave his throat, and everything burned._

_“Doc.”_

_The fire itself seemed to take a step closer, and now it seemed almost human, almost alive. He could see gray eyes, irises stained with embers, ashes falling from them like teardrops._

_“You knew, you figured it out. Why didn’t you come for me—tell them?” Flames dripped from its fingertips. Its palm was almost white with heat, and it reached out toward him, bright and blinding, blurring his vision even more._

_“Why didn’t you save me?”_

_It pressed its hand to Allen’s chest, and he still couldn’t move, couldn’t pull the hand away. He could feel his heart beat beneath his ribs, harder and harder until the beating was replaced with the erratic crackling of fire._

_“Allen!”_

_The tears running down his face felt heaver all of a sudden, smelled of iron. He managed to pull his own hands from where they had still been covering his mouth and nose, and he began to cry harder because the touch on his shoulder became a vice and he couldn’t feel his heart anymore and his cupped palms were filling with his own blood and—_

“Allen, baby, wake up.”

The pillow under his head was wet. Allen felt a calloused finger wipe over the slickness of his cheek, and he shook under it.

“It was just a dream, baby. Everything’s fine.”

Allen wrapped his own fingers loosely around Michael’s wrist, gently moving the hand away from his face. He pulled it lower instead, pressing it tight to his chest. Michael shifted behind him, and soon Allen could feel the solid press of him against his back, his legs tangling with his own.

They laid in silence for a while, and Michael splayed his hand across Allen’s ribs, over his heart. If he concentrated hard enough, Allen thought wearily, he could feel the faintest rhythm of a pulse from the underside of Michael’s wrist. He didn’t know how long they stayed tucked against each other, but eventually Michael exhaled and pressed a kiss to the nape of his neck. “Was it Fuller again?” He whispered.

Allen only tightened his hold on Michael’s hand.

A little bit later, and a little louder, came: “You trust me?”

If it wasn’t for the soft and easy surety that Allen could hear in Michael’s voice as he asked the question, he would have been offended. “Of course I do.”

“Good,” Michael said, voice back to a regular volume. He tugged his fingers gently from Allen’s grasp and slipped off the bed. Allen’s brow furrowed, and he reached out to fumble blindly for the glasses he had placed somewhere on the bedside table.

“Where are you going?” There was a rustling of fabric from across the room, the snap of a button clasp.

“Come on, up and at ‘em. We can’t have the sun rising on us.”

“What in the world are you doing?” His fingers hit something metal, and he moved his hand quickly to catch the glasses before they slid off the side of the table. He shoved them onto his face, and then promptly squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden burst of light from the lamp by the door.

“Sorry,” Michael winced as he released the lamp nob and finished pulling his coat over his shoulders. Allen stared at him, one eyebrow raised in question. Michael just gave him a grim.

“I do not like that look in your eye.”

Michael’s smile grew. “Do you ever? Now hurry up and get out of bed. Grab your coat.” He walked over to the bed, bracing his palms against the mattress to lean over and press a chaste kiss to Allen’s temple. “And your camera,” he added softly against Allen’s skin.

Allen closed his eyes at the touch, and when he opened them again Michael was halfway across the room. He let out a shallow sigh and tried to shake himself back to awareness. He didn’t know what in God’s name Michael was doing, but he rationed that _anything_ was preferable to lying there and falling back into nightmares. With one last resigned sigh, Allen peeled himself out from under the sheets and made his way over to the small wardrobe that he had haphazardly stuffed his clothing in the night before. He rubbed sleep from his eyes as he reached in and grabbed his coat and shoes, then made his way toward the bathroom.

The edge of the porcelain sink dug into his palm as he leaned over the bowl and looked into the mirror. He pulled his glasses off. His eyes were puffy from sleep and shadowed by bags, and the lines between his brow refused to smooth over. He turned on the faucet and ran the water over his face mindlessly, mouth twisting as he felt the days old scruff on his jaw.

He was a wreck.

He looked at his haggard reflection, the image scuffed and discolored by stain and wear on the glass, and not for the first time he found himself wishing that he could forget. Forget Fuller, forget all of the nightmares and worries, forget the imperfections glaring back at him in the mirror, forget his entire _job_.

Closing his eyes, he turned the water off.

He pressed his forehead against the cool glass, and let his fingers brush over his temple. He could still feel the ghost of Michael’s breath against his skin, and a small, unbidden smiled traced across his lips. If there was one thing that Allen couldn’t forget, _refused_ to forget, it was that. Him.

And Allen figured that maybe, the nightmares and horrors were worth it.

。。。

By the time he left the bathroom, his partner had successfully stripped the bed of a blanket and one of the thicker sheets, and had bundled and tied them together into a makeshift bag.

Allen let out a sigh that was probably less exasperated than it should have been. “Should I even ask what it is you’re doing?”

“Not if you don’t want to ruin the surprise,” Michael replied, with way more enthusiasm than was probably acceptable for this time of night. “Come on, Doc.” He opened the door and headed out into the brisk night air, throwing the improvised sac over his shoulder. Allen made to follow him, remembering to snatch his camera off the table before closing the door and hurrying after Michael into the night.

。。。

Five minutes later found them scaling a rickety fire escape, with Allen no closer to finding anything out about what they were doing. Rust fell from the rungs of the ladder as Allen climbed, dusting down like snow and marring the white of his sleep shirt. It was chilly out, the breeze twisting his coat around his ankles and the camera box around his neck seeming to grow heavier and heavier with every second. Allen let out a muttered curse as his foot slipped, knee knocking painfully against the metal side of the ladder.

Needless to say, Allen wasn’t the happiest he’d ever been.

“I’m beginning to think you don’t really have a plan here, Captain. Much less one I’d be on board with.”

Michael chuckled. “We’re just about there.” He twisted his head to look over his shoulder with a smirk. “And it’s _Captain_ , now?”

“Old habits.”

Michael hummed, pushing himself up off of the last rung and moving to kneel on the roof. He met Allen's eyes with a look that immediately made Allen's eyes narrow.,“That’s not what you were calling me last night.”

Allen almost missed a rung. He huffed out a curse and rolled his eyes, unable to think of a satisfactory response, and focused instead on making it up the last few rungs without falling off the side of the building. Michael turned around once he had stood and held out his hand, grin growing. “Nothing to say? Wow. You _must_ be stressed.”

Allen felt heat rising on the back of his neck, and he fought to abate the blush that rose on cheeks. He grasped onto the offered hand anyway, and with Michael’s help he made his way to stand on the roof of their motel. He looked around, searching for anything that was out of the ordinary enough for Michael to want to drag him up here in the dead of night instead of lying warm and safe in their bed.

Nothing. It was, by Allen’s admittedly rather limited knowledge, a pretty much perfectly standard roof.

“Michael...” he turned to his partner in confusion, to find Michael already staring at him, a soft smile on his lips.

“Look up.”

Allen did.

And there were stars.

The sky was _painted_ with them. The Milky Way brushed up from the horizon, shimmering with the palest of purples and blues and glowing faintly green as it dipped behind the earth. The rest of the night sky was splattered with lone stars and constellations, their lights winking through the atmosphere and setting the sky alight.

“I realize now that this is sort of stupid,” Michael began, rubbing nervously at the nape of his neck, “As looking at stars is your job and all, but we’re really in the middle of nowhere—no lights and the like, so I thought that you’d maybe—“

Allen hushed him, voice soft. “It’s _perfect_. Truly. It’s...” He took another look up at the sky, lost for a second in its wonder, even after all these years (but then again, that was why he studied the stars, devoted his life to them, because they never ceased to awe him), and then looked back over at Michael. “...beautiful.”

Michael smiled—a sweet, slow smile that made Allen’s heart catch and breath stop—and reached over to gently squeeze his fingers around Allen’s. “Good.”

。。。

They ended up shoulder to shoulder atop the bedsheet Michael brought, watching the stars above them in a comfortable quiet.

Allen had chuckled when Michael began untying the sac, realizing what it was for, and Michael gave him a teasing glance and said “You’ve got to think ahead, Doc.”

One of the blankets ended up bunched between them and the concrete roof, with the other draped unceremoniously over them to help block some of the chill. Somehow, out here in the cold air, with a hard roof below him and and the sky bright above him, Allen felt warmer than he’d ever felt in bed. As much as he tried to keep his attention on the sky that Michael had brought him all the way up here to see, Allen couldn’t keep his eyes from drifting to his partner every few minutes. He could see the stars just as well in Michael’s eyes as he could in the sky, he reasoned.

Eventually Michael’s mouth quirked up, gaze still upward. “A picture’d last longer, Doc.”

Allen felt his cheeks flush, warm against the chill in the air. The bastard.

“Is that why you had me bring my camera? So you could get a little photo shoot in before the sun rose?”

Michael let out a short huff of laughter. “The opposite, actually. I wanted a photo of you.” Allen turned to lay on his side more comfortably, raising an eyebrow. Michael just laughed again, voice low and not-quite teasing. “Come on, hand it over. I want a candid shot, not one of those mugshots the university makes you take.”

“You’re joking.”

“Far from it, sweetheart.”

Allen could almost feel the pink in his cheeks as he begrudgingly reached for the camera. It was the _sweetheart_ that did him in. It was one thing for Michael to use those names in the safety of their room, delicately and comfortingly, but every time he called Allen it in casual conversation, it made Allen’s heart race. Michael always said it so unceremoniously, with such free and easy fondness behind it, and sometimes Allen still couldn't believe that something so loving was his. 

They both laughed as Michael fumbled through taking a photograph, and Allen made sure to fuss the whole time. If Michael was going to make Allen suffer through something so perfectly trivial and embarrassing, there was no point in making it easy.

"Michael you're going to damage the film if you do it that way." 

"Hush and look pretty, Doc. And for the last time. You're not supposed to look at the camera, it's _candid_."

"There is absolutely nothing candid about this, Michael, and if you make me— _Michael_." 

"Gotcha. Perfectly candid. You can basically see the exasperation in your eyes in this one."

By the end Allen was pretty sure most of the photos were blurry beyond recognition, but he saw Michael slip one of the photos into his coat out of the corner of his eye, so he figured there must have been at least one that the captain thought was worth hanging on to. 

。。。

Neither were the type to complain about the cold, but that wasn’t to say they both weren’t also men of action. It didn’t take long for legs to tangle and faces to be pressed into necks, or for hands to twine together between chests. It wasn’t often that they would let themselves do this, lay so close and so open, but the moonlight was soft and the mood was just quiet enough for them to feel safe in the vulnerability, if only for a little while.

Michael pressed his lips against Allen’s collarbone, and Allen felt a warm tingling rise low on his spine. It was toeing the line between warm and comforting and something more—something that sent his pulse racing and turned his mouth dry—but Allen was content to let it settle somewhere in between, he let himself relax in the tranquility of the moment instead.

As the stars began to dim into pinpricks, Michael tilted his head up and caught Allen’s lips between his, slow and languid.

As the sky slowly turned to gray, Allen traced the sharp lines of Michael’s hips, pressed his fingers into the divots of his skin. When the first streaks of color painted their way across the sky, Allen was already drifting in and out of sleep, aware only of the press of Michael against his body and the lone melody of a birdsong in the distance.

It wasn’t until the reds and oranges had turned to brilliant blues and yellows that they spoke again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Michael mumbled.

Allen stiffened—or did so in his mind, anyway. He really was beyond comfortable, and all of the physical tension from last night had escaped from him at some point on the roof. Even so, words seemed to get caught in the sudden dryness of his throat, and it was all he could do to keep his heart from racing again. Michael squeezed the hand resting over his hip tighter, and let the silence pass for a minute.

“I know what it’s like, you know.”

And Allen actually stilled this time, eerily aware of the quiet of the world around them, of Michael’s even breathing the only sound in his ears.

“I still wake up from them sometimes, no matter how much time passes. Or how many memories I think I forget. They’re all right here,” He rapped his fingers against his temple, a grim smile on his lips. “Waiting for me to close my eyes, just as vivid as the day I made them.”

Michael turned and propped his head up on the palm of his hand. He reached up to turn Allen’s face toward his by the chin, lips gentle as he pressed them to Allen’s mouth. Allen was trembling by the time they broke apart.

“I’m not saying it gets any easier,” Michael said, running his fingers across Allen’s cheek, “But pain dulls, and you learn how to make good memories.” His voice turned low, a fond upturn to his eyes. “Just like these.”

Allen let out a breath, looking to the side to evade Michael’s gaze as he felt his cheeks flush for the umpteenth time that night. “Sap.”

Michael only tilted his head forward in shameless agreement. They laid there a little longer, Michael letting his head fall to pillow on Allen’s chest as his eyes shut once more. Then it was Allen’s turn to speak.

“Maybe it will get better, in time. But part of me... part of me _hates_ this.” He cut off Michael’s protest before it left his lips with a press of his thumb to the captain’s collarbone. “Too many lies, too little trust. Death around one corner and danger around another. But I _need_ to do this, for my own sake, if nobody else's. And with you here...” He looked down at Michael, meeting his eyes with a timid grin. “Well, maybe it's bold of me to say, but with you with me, I feel as though little could go all that wrong."

Michael grinned back up at him brilliantly. “Now who’s the sap?”

“Oh, hush.”

They let themselves enjoy the morning a little longer, world warming around them as the nightmares and fears of the night slowly grew fuzzy and minute. By the time they braved the journey back down the fire escape, the sky was the color of cobalt, and Allen knew everything would be alright, in the end.


End file.
